Wednesday, August 9, 2017

On August 11, The Arcada Theatre will present three of the Chicago area’s best-known power pop acts, along with a Tulsa, OK native who’s known for his mastery of the genre. The quadruple bill of Pezband, Shoes, Cliff Johnson and The Raine, and Dwight Twilley kicks off at 7:00 p.m. It’s another multi-act event for the St. Charles venue, which is housed in a vintage movie theatre.

Twilley is best known for the hits “I’m On Fire” and “Boys,” and his knack for melodic and energetic songs has influenced several musicians. He’s worked extensively with Tom Petty. Pezband was one of the first Chicago bands to embrace power pop music back in the mid-1970s. “Please Be Somewhere Tonight” and “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” led by vocalist Mimi Betinis, remain classics. The band’s 30 Seconds Over Schaumburg EP—recorded at the B’Ginnings club in the northwest suburb, has great versions of original tunes and a cover of “Blue Wind/Stroll On.”

Cliff Johnson’s impressive career includes fronting the band Off Broadway, which gained national attention with impossibly catchy songs like “Stay In Time,” “Hang On For Love,” and “Full Moon Turn My Head Around” from its 1980 Atlantic Records debut On. Johnson currently performs with the veteran Chicago power pop band The Raine on the local club scene. Shoes were one of the very first successful practitioners of the DIY recording approach, attracting major label interest with their self-released Black Vinyl Shoes in 1977. Their tenure with Elektra Records produced gems like “Tomorrow Night,” “Your Imagination,” and “May Day,” before they went back to recording on their own Black Vinyl label. Their most recent effort, 2012’s Ignition, found the band performing at full power with songs like “Head Vs Heart,” “Diminishing Returns,” and Rolling Stones influenced “Hot Mess.”

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About This Blog

Broken Hearted Toy is an eclectic celebration of creativity, with over 1,900 posts since 2009.

It's based in Chicago and covers power pop, garage, cutting-edge, and 1960s rock; along with occasional bits on art; literature; and theatre.

Top of the hill is a nice place to be at. - - - "Elevated Observations" by The Hollies.

Check out some of my other creative endeavors.

Sunday Morning Coffee With Jeff is a weekly Internet show created by and starring Jeff Kelley. It mostly consists of comedy bits and obscure 1960s garage rock set to vintage TV and film clips but also spotlights entertainment events around Illinois.

Over the past few years, my wife Pam and I created a handful of series (each episode was about two minutes long) that were shown on Sunday Morning Coffee With Jeff. They included Manchester Gallery (see description below); Old Days, which I hosted in the persona of a cranky old man named Fritz Willoughby; Roving Reporter, where I played the clueless title character; What's With Terry?, a performance arts program; and Hanging With The Hollies, a takeoff on Breakfast With The Beatles.

I've also worked with Kelley and contributors Willy Deal and David Metzger on comedy clips. Jeff just kicked off a new season of Sunday Morning Coffee With Jeff, with some cool graphics to go with his new regular features. Willy Deal is onboard, and I'm hoping to join them for some creative endeavors in the near future.

I'm particularly proud of this 21-episode comedy series Pam and I created for Sunday Morning Coffee With Jeff. Each installment was a few minutes long, and featured me portraying Terrence, the curator of a pop culture museum.

My original concept was to make up funny descriptions for some of the rock memorabilia I've collected, but it soon morphed into a sit-com format where my character's inept and devious ways constantly got him into trouble. The two running themes that fueled the action concerned a purloined Beatles button, and the scrambled eggs Paul McCartney was eating when he got the inspiration to compose "Yesterday."

I'm currently exploring options for pitching my Manchester Gallery web-based series to a media company that could help it reach a much larger audience.

This Chicago-based magazine has been covering rock music for close to 40 years, and has a readership of 165,000. I started contributing in 1987 and have written several feature stories and far too many album reviews to count. The Illinois Entertainer can also be found in an online edition.

After starting Broken Hearted Toy a few years back, I asked I.E.'s editor and publisher if I could post material that I had previously written for their publication, and they graciously granted me permission to do so.

Chicago Art Machine was a web-based publishing company run by Editor-in-Chief, Kathryn Born, and Managing Editor, Robin Dluzen, that included Chicago Art Magazine, Chicago DIY Film,Chicago Performance And Trailers, and TINC. Most of my submissions appeared in Chicago DIY Film and Chicago Performance And Trailers, although I contributed to all the online Chicago Art Machine publications.

Unfortunately, Chicago Art Machine has folded. I greatly enjoyed working with Kathryn and Robin, and I'm glad to see they've gone on to other projects in the arts and journalism. I hope to work with them again at some point in the future.

I was a writer and performer with this local comedy group from 1989 to 2009. Amusical parody I wrote about Arthur Andersen's Enron crisis was covered by the Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Reader, and other publications.

Famous In The Future continues to perform in the Chicago area, and has appeared at every one of the Abbie Hoffman Died For Our Sins theatre festivals that are held each August at the Mary-Arrchie Theatre. Abbie Hoffman Died For Our Sins will celebrate its 25th Anniversary in August, 2013.

Famous In The Future has a musical side project called The Rut, which occasionally plays at concert events organized by whitewolfsonicprincess, a band that's an offshoot of Black Forest Theatre.

I'm an active member of SCBWI, (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) and have written two Middle Grade fantasy novels that I'm shopping to literary agents. I've finished a mystery/satiric novel that takes place amidst Chicago's alternative music scene in the mid-1980s.

Broken Hearted Toy

The blog title comes from the line, "I'm the brokenhearted toy you play with" in the song "I Can't Let Go" by The Hollies. One of the great original British Invasion bands, The Hollies continue to have an immense influence on power pop bands to this day, and have finally been inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Here is a video of "I Can't Let Go" being performed in 1966.